Dad dancing till 5am? Oh please, why can't we grown-ups act our age!

There was a birthday party in our street last weekend. A top club DJ supplied the music, the dancing went on until 5am, and the following morning one of the guests was found face down on the front lawn wearing his trousers as a turban.

Just another night of teenage binge-drinking in the suburbs, you might think. Except the birthday boy in question was celebrating his 45th.

These same people will be heading down to the Isle of Wight as the summer festival season kicks off next week.

At a gig, Donna even toyed with the idea of taking her top off and sitting on her husband's shoulders, but she didn't know if his knees could take it

Men and women old enough to know better will be flashing their wristbands and doing some serious dad dancing to the likes of the hip rock band Vampire Weekend.

What's happened to the world? There seems to be some kind of role reversal going on. While the younger generation worry about serious stuff like their future career prospects and whether they'll ever get a foot on the property ladder, their parents have turned into Peter Pan people who refuse to grow up.

Like my friends Maggie and Dan, for instance, who are in their 50s. They went to Ibiza two summers ago. They partied all night, slept all day and, like most seasoned clubbers, came home with extensive liver damage and no trace of a suntan.

While they were larging it in the club Manumission, their 20-year-old student daughter was cleaning toilets in Burger King to supplement her meagre student income.

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Did they feel guilty? Not really. And why should they? Like many of us, they'd paid their dues in the family-rearing business. Their mortgage was more or less paid off, they had fewer financial commitments.

After all those years of hard graft, school runs and taking overpriced holidays in child-friendly ghettoes, they've decided it's finally time for some adult fun.

And what better way to have fun than by getting back in touch with your inner teenager? Especially as, unlike the first time around, we've now got the time, confidence and the means to enjoy it.

It's difficult to rebel when your dad's illegally downloading the new Biffy Clyro album on to
his iPhone

Even Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis has in the past bemoaned the
fact that the majority of Glasto-goers are middle-aged and middle class
(here's a hint, Michael, if you want kids to come along, stop selling
tickets that only hedge fund managers can afford).

But so what? We may have driving licences older than some of the acts appearing, but at least we tidy up after ourselves. And we know how to behave.

Although not everyone seems to believe that. My forty-something friend Karen was most offended when a security guard confiscated her quiche at an REM gig - in case she threw it at the band.

'As if,' she snorted. 'It was from Waitrose.'

Nowhere is the middle-aged revolution more apparent than Facebook. Once the preserve of school and college-age kids, now it's swamped with the over-50s, who cyber flirt with their teenage children' s friends, post photos of themselves in bikinis and describe their status as 'trashed'.

I have to admit I have joined the Peter Pan generation. In the past year I've acquired a BlackBerry (although I'm still looking for a techno-savvy ten-year-old to show me how to work it); bought something from Top Shop that wasn't for my daughter; and been to a gig.

I even toyed with the idea of taking my top off and sitting on my husband's shoulders, but I didn't know if his knees could take it - and anyway, it's hard to pretend you're young and carefree when you're wearing a bra from the Triumph Doreen collection.

Such ideas would never have occurred to our parents. They slipped from parenthood to pensionerdom in the time it took to put on a pair of Hush Puppies.

As soon as their last child left home, they would have an overwhelming urge to buy his'n'hers car coats and take up crown green bowling.

While the younger generation worry about serious stuff like their future career prospects, their parents have turned into Peter Pan people who refuse to grow up

When punk first happened, I don't remember my mum putting a safety pin through her nose and rushing up to the King's Road to buy a pair of bondage trousers.

And the closest my dad ever came to the frantic atmosphere of a 'mosh' pit - for those not in the know, it's the section right in front of the stage where people pack themselves in like gyrating sardines - was the 'Over-60s Discount Day' at B&Q.

But maybe they had the right idea? In the old days, everyone knew their place. It was a teenager's job to be surly and difficult, and an adult's job to shake their head at Top Of The Pops and ask: 'Is that supposed to be a man or a woman?'

WHO KNEW?

Most of us think that you stop being young at 35 and start being old at 58, according to the European Social Survey

Now, how is a teenager supposed to kick against the traces when they've already been battered down by their parents? It's difficult to rebel when your mum's getting her derriere tattooed and your dad's illegally downloading the new Biffy Clyro album on to his iPhone.

Our former neighbours Phil and Sue always prided themselves on their cool credentials as parents. They loved to boast about how 'open' they were with their teenage son, discussing their sex life in cringe-worthy detail and even sharing the occasional spliff.

How was the poor boy supposed to deal with that? The only way he could shock them was by buying a Neil Diamond CD.

Maybe there's a sinister reason behind our refusal to grow up. Maybe in our youth-obsessed culture, we're afraid to admit age has caught up with us, in case we're condemned to the scrapheap.

In our desperate quest for eternal youth, perhaps we're lingering too long in areas where we don't belong any more.

Or maybe, like the guests at our neighbour's party, we're just having too much fun to leave.